Today I was watching the Pasta episode of “Good Eats” (technically titled, “Pantry Raid I: Use Your Noodle”). In the intro, AB says “Pasta is as basic as it is beloved; as unitarian as is it is universal.” “Unitarian” doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in reference to pasta. Did he mean to say “utilitarian”, or is this a reference to Unitarian Universalism ?
In the context, it would make a lot more sense for it to be “utilitarian”. I think he just goofed.
On a fan page, http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com the line appears as “unitarian, as it is universal”
It doesn’t make sense that way and I would agree with ultrafilter that it’s more like “utilitarian” and we all heard it wrong.
We’ve got a TiVo-like setup on our computer. I have the episode recorded and I replayed that spot. He clearly says “unitarian”. I’m trying to figure out if he meant “utilitarian”, or it was just a little throwaway reference to UU. You’d pretty much have to be a UU to catch it-- anyone else would probably not even notice. I read somewhere that he likes to put in little throwaway jokes of that sort.
It’s certainly possible.
It sounds like a play on words to me. Pasta does figure into a lot of cuisines, thereby being a uniting factor in a way, right? I’d have caught it, but I’m not sure non-UU types would.
I think anyone who’s heard of the Unitarian Universalists might have caught it. I did.